


afraid of staying the same

by deadlikemoi



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Does the Force work that way? shrug emoji, Entering EU Territory in Ch. 2, F/M, Flashbacks and Memory Sharing, Flashbacks to moments from TLJ, Force dreams, Force equivalent of a tug of war, Kylo is building a moat around himself, Mentions of past mental manipulation, Rey is searching, Welcome to Star Wars Historical Story Time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-08-14 16:09:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20195011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadlikemoi/pseuds/deadlikemoi
Summary: Perhaps it was more Solo or Skywalker, this part of him that refused to look back to those days as he was likely to experience the unhappy feeling of fondness when her lithe form flitted across his mind, but there was no option other than moving forward.Going back was not an option. Back that way was—pain.His own mental state was still unfortunate.He felt her reaching out, heard all of her entreaties, but Kylo Ren was not a man who was easily swayed, not anymore.In his weakest moments, the light somehow managed to extricate itself in bits and pieces, and he wouldn't be surprised if they latched on to her, wherever she was, but those few seconds were becoming more and more rare.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LostInQueue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostInQueue/gifts).

> The prompt she submitted, along with a great song, was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfgO6JQO-NA&list=RDgp2cmHNbMYM&index=8 
> 
> Rey reflects on how she saw her memories laced with Ben’s when their hands touched in TLJ. She can see them, feel them in her core. She worries about her decisions going forward and scared she might not ever see Ben again. She remembers how they fought together. The force may reach into her mind the way Kylo tried to, opening her to his past. She feels physical pain from both what he encountered and what he endured mentally with the mind games Snoke played with him, too. The more she thinks about it, the more the bond opens to them. Her’s is completely opened to him after she’s sorted everything out. Rey can see the pinhole of an opening Ben/Kylo has to her and decides to stay open to him until he’s ready to reach out to her, either promising to be there or looking to force it open to save him. Smut is welcome but not required. 
> 
> This is for Kelly who is an absolute treasure to have in this fandom! I really hope you enjoy this and that it brings a little bit of happiness to your life. Thank you for everything you do!

_I saw you lifeless in your eyes_  
_Feel the depth of your disguise_  
_Lose your touch more every night_  
_We were so afraid of staying the same_  
_I don’t wanna lose us_

In the moments when her eyes were closed, Rey could feel him like he was still pressed up against her back, waging war against Snoke's Praetorian Guard in the throne room.

Their hands reached for each other through the distance, sharing so much through the bond in the Force. Every single second seemed to span a lifetime and included the extinction of almost all beings in their species except for the two of them. 

This man, the one who fought and struggled for each and every breath he managed to take, this was Ben Solo. The light shined through him so brightly that the intensity nearly blinded her. 

It was only a matter of time now. 

_"I thought I'd find answers here. I was wrong. I've never felt so alone." The cold bit at her even as the fire crackled beside her. Somehow she was able to feel the heat his body generated through the bond, and her body cried out for her to inch closer. _

_"You're not alone," he said, and she could feel something in him crumbling away. _

_"Neither are you." _

_Everything flared as they both reached across the expanse, all things moving in slow motion, and her mind was immediately blown wide open to allow her the vision of the two of them, dressed in white and light greys, surrounded by light on all sides. _

_In an instant, time stopped and the force of Luke Skywalker's anger descended on them, knocking the Force into the two of them as it pushed them to separate sides of her small hut, but where it once provided shelter from the whipping rains, there was now nothing but wet wood and smoke. _

_"Leave this island now," Skywalker shouted at her through the rain. _

_It was useless to ask the old man for answers, they were always presented in halves, so she agreed to leave with a guarantee to see Ben Solo turn back to the light._

Meditating was more difficult than she expected. The ancient jedi texts were nearly turned to dust with the number of times she had flipped each and every page, hoping against hope that a yet unknown part of her mind would flip like a switch and everything would make sense like it never had before. 

She remembered seeing Luke meditate, though he easily could've been catching a nap for all she knew. 

"Relax," she whispered to herself as the air stirred around where she was seated on the extended ramp. 

"Calm, become one with the Force." Each breath she took in filled her with more static, so much so that she could barely stay still with her legs folded in front of herself and her eyes closed. 

Where the Millennium Falcon was docked on Espirion -tucked far away from the abandoned military base that the locals let them take over when they saw General Leia with their own eyes - she could have the little privacy she craved with a short excursion into the brush. 

After the events on Crait, everyone was concerned enough that they didn't want to let her out of their sight for too long, being the last jedi and all that. It didn't matter how many times she told them the First Order wasn't likely to surprise them without some prior knowledge of their location. Though she knew it didn't matter, she tried to keep the bond open just enough that he could still connect should he have a need to and perhaps she might be warned if they were coming. 

The entirety of the Resistance was on the run after they managed to slip through the First Order's grasp; they spent weeks out in space, planet hopping from one place to another, barely staying long enough to refuel and get together some meager supplies before they were off again, because no society wanted to be the one to house them for good. 

The First Order would hunt them down even if it meant their own eminent destruction. 

It was only luck that Leia knew a fair number of Alder-Espirions who thought it a gift to have her in their midst. 

By now, she had lost count of how many times she reached out, arms open, to only be met with silence. He hadn't deigned to answer any of her figurative knockings either. 

So be it. 

This was a time for growth and responsibility, and Rey was determined to make the Resistance proud. 

"Breathe, Rey." Her own mental shields were raised high while still forever searching the unfamiliar terrain for any threat that might make its way to their doorstep.

First, she felt ripples in the Force, distant enough that it felt like nothing more than distortion except that she was programmed to pick up on his Force signature even as faint as this was.

"**Rey.**" 

"Ben?" Quickly moving up on her feet, faster than the wind could move, whatever was there was gone just as quickly as it came, barely a whisper in the trees. 

As if an echo of the man she had long been waiting for, longing for—really, the comlink his mother provided her buzzed into life. "Jakku." 

They find it funny, the lot of them, but when it came time to pick code names should the First Order find their frequency and pick up on their transmissions, no one could remember Rey's chosen pseudonym.

No matter how many times she tried to change it, it always came back to this. The fight left her at some point, so she continued to shrug it off. 

"What's up, Storm?" She so badly wanted to make some joke of her own, but the excitement of maybe, possibly hearing Ben's voice made her mind effectively blank. Though she was sure it was real, a small part of her whispered that her subconscious was so exhausted from its endless searching that it created a whisp of something from nothing. 

Their communications were kept short and to the point, and she knew that just receiving a call meant it was time to return back to base. Chewie was her constant companion; she wondered more than once if he could sense the part of Ben that laid dormant inside the bond. When she couldn't sleep at night, it was Ben that managed to lull her into unconsciousness, she was sure of it. 

Finn, Rose, Poe, and Kaydel welcomed them back inside and secured the large mechanical doors that kept everything out. 

"What do you do while you're out there?" Rose looked over her barely sweat slicked skin, expecting her to be somehow different than she was when she left, but Rey knew her friend dreamt of venturing out into the wilds instead of being cooped up inside recovering. No one needed to remind her about how brave of a thing she did. 

Life hustled and bustled like it normally did, and Rey found ways to be useful to slow the monotony when there were no ships allowed out for fear of attracting unwanted attention. 

The connection between Leia's adoptive parents and a good portion of this planet's citizenry was tenuous at best, but the First Order wasn't known for logic and understanding. Still, it was better to not second guess things or directly defy orders. 

She and Poe were buried inside the guts of a decrepit Corellian Corvette when she felt the tingle on the back of her neck and the vacuum of the Force surrounding her on all sides. 

"You're thinking of my mother." 

Her mouth opened to respond when she remembered there was a man sitting next to her, one who Kylo Ren happily tortured for hours, and a sorrowful smile graced his gaunt face before the bond was closed as quickly as it opened. 

"You alright?" Everything tilted slightly and Rey shrieked, barely managing to grasp the edge of the turret before she fell off and injured herself on the hard ground below. Poe was equally as unbalanced, but managed to keep himself upright while he took in her reaction. "What was that all about?" 

"Sorry I—" Any excuse she could grasp was flimsy and some part of her twinged as she watched the bewilderment shade his face. "Sometimes the Force does this thing where everything else is stuck in some sort of limbo, and I have a hard time remembering that all things continue to move."

It wasn't necessarily a lie, more like an omission of key facts that would trouble Poe and find him running to Leia and anyone else he could reach for that matter. When she thought it over, she couldn't really say she'd blame him for doing it either.

They kept at it for a few more hours until they were covered in more grease and grime than a single shower could possibly clean away, so they called it a night and retreated off to their own respective spaces. Being alone wasn't anything new, but knowing that so many people she loved were so close by warmed her from the inside out. The loneliness was displaced by that. 

"Why is everything suddenly so complicated?" Every hour seemed to bring a larger sense of separation from one particular person, and though she could feel his almost clumsy path through the bond at the time, it didn't get easier or simpler. 

She missed the days when he seemed to seek her out, before they realized there was a way to call to the other, to initiate the connection, and there was no way past his love of power and desperate need for a legacy long since buried. 

She used enough water for three showers by the time she was finally clean enough to enjoy the sheen of moisture on her skin; they had primitive showers that made a lonely desert dweller from the sands of Jakku scream in exuberance. Water was always a treasure. 

She found her bunk, almost bare save for the single pillow and lone blanket, and her body felt overextended and battered to a degree that didn't match with her usual routine. 

Sleep was always elusive for her, it stayed so far off beyond the horizon that her mind started to wander, and she laid on her back, thinking. It was dangerous, on occasion, as her imagination liked to run wild and gave her over to some wild dreams. 

Tonight, when it finally claimed her, she fell into darkness, and she was sure that it had been simply dreamless sleep, but her attempts at meditation hours later snapped her back into the memory of it. 

Darkness surrounded her, but it wasn't weightless and serene as she'd first expected. Instead, it wrapped around her tighter and tighter until a voice spoke out, one she tried not to recall, tried to force out of her whole being, but still it came in from all sides. 

_"They fear you, young padawan. The other students know of the true power at your disposal, and they fear your strength. Luke Skywalker senses in you something beyond his own means, and he is determined to destroy you."_

Snoke. 

That voice never fully left her; it still crept into her worst nightmares where she struggled to turn Kylo Ren back into Ben Solo and lost him again and again.

She was inside his head, hearing old reverberations of the manipulations his own master wrought on his unprepared psyche. It was no wonder that he held so tightly to the Dark Side of the Force, the legacy of Darth Vader, and every unsuccessful attempt at severing himself from the Light. 

There were few things she knew to be existentially true, but the one that she kept returning to was the fact that Ben Solo would return to be at her side, one way or another. 

———

Is power what he was really craving so deeply for so long? 

Part of him screamed **yes**, but it came from the part of his mind that was sectioned off and stored behind layers and layers of his own mental barriers once he realized it was Snoke who infiltrated his mind so long ago. 

His future was never clear; too many small parts that made him both Skywalker and Solo along with so many other facets that were all uniquely Ben. 

It wasn't until she was summarily dropped into his path that he thought or even took the time to consider being Ben Solo again. 

Part of him was mystified after their first Force bond connection; he had never heard tell of two individuals seeing each other as if they stood in the same location instead of scattered far and wide amongst the stars. 

Being the Supreme Leader of the First Order took every single one of his mental faculties, leaving not one spare centimetre of space for worrying over Rey or the Resistance or anything else save for finding new and effective ways to bring order throughout the galaxy. 

It was only when his mind stumbled back to _The Supremacy_ and the heart wrenching rejection he incurred at her hands that he was reminded of his own humanity. Humans as a species always felt more than any other, and it was a weakness he tried to exterminate at every venture. 

Perhaps it was more Solo or Skywalker, this part of him that refused to look back to those days as he was likely to experience the unhappy feeling of fondness when her lithe form flitted across his mind, but there was no option other than moving forward. 

Going back was not an option. Back that way was—pain. 

His own mental state was still unfortunate. 

He felt her reaching out, heard all of her entreaties, but Kylo Ren was not a man who was easily swayed, not anymore. 

In his weakest moments, the light somehow managed to extricate itself in bits and pieces, and he wouldn't be surprised if they latched on to her, wherever she was, but those few seconds were becoming more and more rare. 

His own ship, _The Integrity_, stood as the new capital in addition to the training grounds for General Hux's reformed stormtrooper army. The population of an entire planet could happily coexist in a single section of the ship. 

Gone were the days of massive weaponry that turned whole planets to rubble; the new leadership of the First Order seemed to bring about fear with just a name, so there was no need for threats of violence—no one had a doubt that Kylo would deliver if it were necessary. 

His own quarters took up almost an entire section on the right side of the ship. While it only required the deaths of a few high ranking officials before everyone fell in behind him, Kylo didn't take his own personal safety for granted. Almost half a mile of durasteel separated the inside of his chambers from the corridors that connected to the rest of the ship. 

The time had gone for the Supreme Leader to rely on the protection of humans. They were easy to manipulate and coerce, and Kylo had more faith in his own abilities than those of others, force users or not. 

He managed to figure out, in a rather genius move, that he could rely on the natural instinct of certain species, only slightly obscured with his force abilities, so they protected him from it all. 

Fyrnocks inhabited the rooms above and below his chambers, made to believe they were still sequestered in a cave on their own home world, and the creatures were fast enough to take anyone by surprise, possessing jaws and claws sharp enough to break through even the thickest of armor. This was demonstrated on one unlucky stormtrooper. 

Inside the lone entrance door to his chambers, shackled invariably to a line that doesn't allow him much space, was a Kell Dragon. Surely it wouldn't be enough to protect him from everything, but it worked well as a warning system of sorts. 

After all, Kylo Ren armed with his lightsaber and a truly horrible attitude was more ruthless than even the most determined and ferocious of foes. 

"Worried, are you?" Merche Ren remarked after she entered and found herself face to face with the animal's angry visage. Kylo easily called it off with a wave of his hand. 

"I've found that people aren't as dependable as we'd like to believe." 

"Ah, yes—very true." 

He called for one of the Knights of Ren for a proper spar, his body had grown tired of dispatching droids and holofigures, he needed a real person to fight against and an outlet for every feeling that crept up his spine. Above all, he needed to let it all out. 

The training room was built to his exact specifications, and he was not let down; metres of padded floors with fiberplast walls that weren't excessively painful, but the collision of body to flat surface was strong enough to steal the breath of anyone who was unfortunate enough to meet it at high speed. 

"The usual?" Merche questioned as she removed her cloak and freed her lightsaber from where it was latched to her belt, dropping into a defensive stance immediately. 

There was no need for words, these two were especially sensitive to each other as Kylo acted as her big brother more than anything, being older when she first entered Luke's jedi academy. She was his closest confidante— if he had one true friend it was her, but believing in such a thing was far beyond him. 

His stance was distinctly offensive, and she had little notice before he was charging at her, the plasma of his lightsaber cutting through the air around her so closely that he may have signed off a few centimetres of her long, dusty blonde hair. 

"Oy! Watch where you're putting that thing!" Now spitting mad, she lunged with her own purple lightsaber and fell easily into Ataru which forced Kylo back three full steps before he knocked her down with the swipe of his leg at her own feet. If she weren't focused on missing the tantrum-rage swings of his saber she would've seen it coming and really, she should have known better. 

"Always tricky, you are." 

The grin that greeted her was so expressive and such a rare sight that her breath caught in her lungs. He never allowed anyone to see him like this; it was almost as if someone else shone through for a split second. 

They fought each other ruthlessly and without hesitation. In the space of twenty-five minutes both were drenched in sweat and panting heavily through each movement and exertion. 

In one last ditch effort toward victory, Merche hurled her lit lightsaber at him while she threw her smaller body into his large form. Kylo batted the lightsaber away with a twitch of his hand, but the distraction was enough to slam him to the floor with the forward push of her momentum.

With a dramatic groan, he rose from the floor and acted as if to dust himself off, but the droids cleaned daily and there wasn't a speck of it anywhere, so he moved out of habit more than anything else. "That'll be enough for today. I have a lot of work that needs my attention." 

"Yes, Supreme Leader. Thanks for the fight." Merche bowed down before him and picked up her cloak, disappearing in a flash. 

No one else bothered him for the rest of the night, and Kylo always longed for solitude in that measure. 

It was odd to have all the things he wanted more than he could say. Scratch that, most of the things. He wouldn't allow one specific _thing_ to counteract all else. 

He struggled to keep her name out of his mouth and mind, but it was so difficult. In moments of peace, she was there. In his sleep, he knew she was somewhere out there, waiting, maybe closer than he could ever imagine.

The minute the door closed on the Millennium Falcon on Crait, he thought he'd lost her. He'd done everything wrong. But as days turned to weeks and months, he started to feel her familiar force signature press against his mind, telling him that she was ready to forgive, but he was not.

At one time it was only Snoke, and his master's clawed fingers accompanied the excruciating mental push. But she was gentle, assured, humble even. 

There was no one else it could be. 

He cut off that line of thinking immediately. 

_You're better than this_, he scolded himself for starting down the road that ended at her feet. _Enough_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, I am living for this fic and all the research associated with it, but I don't know how far this rabbit hole goes. So, sorry? 
> 
> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Some parts of this chapter are hard to trudge through because they're so thick with information, but hopefully it will get easier with the next chapter! (Fingers crossed!)

"Kriff."

Rose frowned at her for only a second before she schooled her expression back into blankness. "Try again. Don't be nervous, she knows you." 

"Right, right, alright—" in went a sharp breath, and she let it out slowly in an attempt to allow her heart rate to fall back within normal range. "I had your family's lightsaber when I went off in search of your son. It was damaged in the fight, ripped in half, destroyed, and now I have no weapon aside from a blaster. I make this request not for myself, but so that I can fully act in my role within the Resistance and protect—everything."

There were still many things she was keeping to herself, mostly because she wasn't sure what kind of reaction Leia would have. How do you tell someone you have communicated with their son, sometimes been close enough to touch him, all through a bond in the Force? Anyone in the right frame of mind would see the glaring security threat that she was, and her heart twinged to think about the possibility of being pushed out of the Resistance and away from her friends.

"I think you'll be fine," Rose smiled and attempted to rise from where they sat together on the floor, but her body was still not in perfect condition, so she required Rey's shared strength to get her up. 

They separated in the hall as Rey veered off to grab lunch while Rose went back to her bunk for some rest. Finn and Poe were deep in conversation when she sat down beside them, tray piled high with every option available, and the eyes of both men trailed over the heaping piles of food that she quickly dug into. 

"I'm always shocked by how different you are from most other women." Poe said it an offhand way, not meant to wound, but she stopped all the same. 

"Different? What do you mean 'different'?" Everyone was troubled by her initial attempts to eat solely with her hands, so she was rather surprised to hear another slight sent her way. She was using a spoon and not eating with her mouth hanging open, what more did they want?

Finn's head moved back and forth between the two, possibly trying to nip any issues in the bud before they bloomed. 

"I just mean to say that, no offence intended, most women barely eat when they're around men. At least that's what I've noticed."

There weren't many other people still in the mess hall, everyone was required to eat in specified shifts so that all members weren't assembled in one area together, and of the few women seated, none were eating. 

"Look," her utensil fell back to her tray and landed in her kibla greens and mepple soup, "Try living day after after with the knowledge that you might not eat tomorrow or the next day. You don't worry too much about how you eat in those scenarios."

Poe had the good grace to look ashamed and offered his apology and a hushed goodbye, almost running from the room while he could get away in one piece, and Finn turned to glare at her. 

"That wasn't nice." 

"I don't know what you mean." 

Finn sighed and took the utensil from her, requiring her full attention. "We all had our own problems growing up, so it's not fair to compare his to yours. Acting like that won't make you any friends. He shouldn't have made the comment, but you didn't need to attack him for it either." 

"Attack? I didn't attack him." Rey looked around as if someone at one of the far tables might agree with her. Internally she fumed, and she almost thought she felt that same feeling echoed back through the bond. Ben couldn't know what was going on. 

He handed the spoon back to her, "You two don't really know each other, so I think the normal gauge for what's okay and what's not still needs to be calibrated." He was finally speaking her language, and she nodded.

"I'll apologize when I see him next." 

———

The longer Rey had to think about the conversation she needed to have with Leia, the more anxious she grew. It wasn't likely that she'd respond in a bad way, but it was new for Rey to ask anyone for permission, and her first attempts at most things weren't going well. 

High command meetings were held on odd days of the week, shortly before sun down, so she knew where the general was going to be at one fixed point in time. Though Leia and some others welcomed her into the fold with wide open arms, others were hesitant to accept an unknown factor when their numbers were so small, and they were unsure of her value. 

She couldn't be completely sure, but she considered that maybe a few harsh words were exchanged because she suddenly wasn't met with hostile glances and tense silence when she walked into an occupied room. Everyone else walked away until Poe and Leia meandered around slowly, and both fell quiet when they took notice of her presence. He shot her a rather sorrowful smile before he excused himself and left them alone. 

"To what do I owe the pleasure?"

A large lump suddenly wedged itself down into her throat, allowing little more than air to pass through. "I—uh, I needed to discuss a few things with you if you have the time." 

Leia patted the chair next to her when she sat and held up her hands as if to say 'who else is waiting', and Rey dropped down into the seat. No one spoke for a few moments, and she realized that the other woman intended to wait her out until she was ready. 

Clearing her throat, she linked her fingers together and rested them in her lap to avoid fidgeting. "I'm not sure if you were aware at the time, but I came to be in the possession of the Skywalker lightsaber, but it's gone now—destroyed, I'm sorry." Her mind drifted back to the burned out shell of the throne room, Ben's desperate pleas, and the eternal understanding she had that their time would come. "I'm no use to anyone without a lightsaber, even if I'm not a proper jedi, so I'm hoping you will allow me out, with Chewbacca of course, to find a new one." 

Leia simply watched her, feeling no need to rush in a response to her, and she seemed to fully take in all the information that was just leveled at her. "I know about the lightsaber, when it was found and then its destruction, the Force speaks to us all in mysterious ways." 

There was perhaps another meaning to her words, but Rey was too busy calculating how she'd failed to notice the general's own Force sensitivity. But it wasn't something she knew to search for, and she was still wholly untrained. 

"_You need a teacher! I can show you the ways of the Force!_" 

She felt it vibrate through her and disappear in the blink of an eye, but the look on the older woman's face told her it was loud enough for all to hear. 

"I..." Words wouldn't come together to form sentences, and she kept trying to unlatch her tongue from the roof of her mouth when she felt Leia's hand softly on her arm. 

"We all have our secrets." A blanket of calm settled over Rey, no longer carrying the stress and worry associated with that burden, and she let the feeling envelope her entire being, force and all. "I think I might have a resolution to this." 

———

"You're going where?!" Finn basically screamed at her as she got together everything she'd need to make the trip. 

"I can't tell you that, so stop asking. General Organa knows where I'll be and how to find me should I be needed. Don't worry, you will see me again." 

She witnessed the fight leave him then and knew he was resigned to staying behind, away from the adventure, yet again. 

"Stay here and help Rose," she wiped her hands off on her already dirty leggings. "Have Poe teach you about what makes an engine roar, we need more of that. But most importantly, keep everyone safe. Promise me." Finn nodded along and managed to bring his eyes up just in time as she jumped into his arms from the ramp above. 

They twirled and spun for an extended moment, and he set her back down onto her own two feet. "Be ready for my return, Finn. I will need your help if everything goes to plan." Chewie carried the few medical supplies the Resistance could spare, leveling the pair with an eager glance and knowing eye. 

"I have a comlink," her voice breezed its way into his ear, "if it's ever so dire, you can reach me that way."

It was early enough in the day that most of the people who inhabited the base were still deeply asleep in their beds, save for the few who always grew restless after the sun came up, and she thought she caught a glimpse of a familiar braided updo when she dropped into the co-pilot seat beside Chewie. 

"We'll be back. This isn't goodbye forever." His response was rather sad, and she left his words to hang in the air. Each and every trip found them weakened and emptier than they started, though their souls sagged as they carried the weight of the ones they lost. 

With the coordinates entered, the Millennium Falcon soared high above the trees until it passed the upper levels of the atmosphere, and they were once again among the stars. The memory of flying with Han, barreling down toward the lush landscape of Takodana, hit her like the impact of hurtling head first into a brick wall. 

"I will bring Ben back for you, Chewie, for Han. I promise." 

Any response to her words was lost behind the sound of the air stilling around her, and though she wanted nothing more than to get a single good glimpse of him, she willed herself to push him out. He can't answer now after she had been asking for so long. 

Her mind went blank; this mission had to remain secret, so much relied on her ability to complete this quickly and without raising attention. 

No. Not today. 

The emotions she pushed through to him surely spoke volumes about how she felt. Her eagle eyed determination would take the back seat to nothing else.

The ride through hyperspace gave her time to walk around, shaking out her limbs and clearing her mind in any way she could, but still everything aboard sent her back to moments with Finn and BB-8, others with Han, Chewie, and a number of mercenaries on the prowl, and then one last moment that couldn't have belonged to her: a Han with considerably less lines, wrinkles, and grey hair chasing a boy no older than five through the passage she was walking herself. The boy had short cropped black hair, but the oversized ears and pouty lips gave him away immediately. 

Pressing herself against the wall as tightly as possible, Rey observed the two Solo men with their various screams and laughs, and knew that he could certainly feel the serenity that overcame her. 

She allowed that thought for one more minute, a whole 60 seconds, before she finished the walk to her bunk and set herself down gingerly. Her body felt taxed beyond possibility, calling for him and then pushing away, it was all too inconvenient and put her in a troubling headspace. 

"Give me a month," she told the stars and the galaxy at large. "If you truly want to see me, you can wait like you've made me wait. It won't kill you." A warm sensation tingled at the back of her neck, and she knew that was all the recognition she would get. His back and forth, hot and cold, was nearly debilitating. 

———

Chewie dropped them out of hyperspace hours later, making the length of travel almost double what it should've been, but she knew he gave her the additional time to sort herself out. They both stayed quiet as they looked out at the planet before them. 

After a life spent deep in the sand, every new destination was another glimpse at what she'd never experienced before. 

"Wow." Her mouth dropped open, Chewie echoing the sentiment in his own language, and she tried to see where the blue stopped, but it was endless. 

Leia told her that this planet, located far inside the Unknown Regions, was perhaps the answer to all their problems. Zakuul was an empire in years past, after the ascension of the Eternal Empire, Valkorion looked to raise it above all else in the galaxy. He collected Force sensitives as if they were the high cards in a deadly game of sabacc. 

With time expressed as the years before and after the Battle of Yavin, the being or spirit known to have last existed around 3600 BBY, was called Tenebrae, Vitiate, the Sith Emperor, and Valkorion, he was the illegitimate son of a Sith Lord of the old Sith Empire before the start of the Great Hyperspace War. 

Lore told that both the light and dark sides came together, united, to defeat a common enemy they found in Valkorion. Sith and jedi worked toward a common goal, with the help of Mandalorians when their numbers simply weren't enough to wage a tactical war against the Eternal Fleet, an army of sentient droids loyal only to the owner of the Eternal Throne. 

The Eternal Alliance, as the combined forces came to be called, evolved a strategy so they could besiege the Spire, capital city of Zakuul, to hijack the template for the GEMINI droids. They teamed with an artificial intelligence from Iokath, SCORPIO, who obtained the design template (GEMINI Prime) associated with the droids and deactivated the template, knowing that the Alliance planned to install the droids on the Fleet's ships for ultimate control over the armada. 

In her attempt to grant all artificial intelligence free will similar to her own, SCORPIO faked her death to upload herself into the frequency to take control over the Eternal Throne. 

Double crossed and with their position on Odsessen exposed, Eternal Emperor Arcann attacked the Alliance's base on planet, where he was repelled and the ensuing battle ended without a single casualty for the Alliance. 

Vaylin, sister of Arcann, attacked Odsessen in kind, and though their forces fought on land and in orbit, the Alliance was able to keep them at bay and provided the death knell to the Eternal Empire. 

The new Eternal Alliance rose up in the ashes of its enemy, but what came to be of the Empire or of Zakuul? What of the Force sensitive Knights of Zakuul? Had they simply disappeared or returned to anonymity? Odsessen grew to be the capital of the new Alliance, with its strength as a nexus for the Force, and Zakuul simply faded away. 

As they stared down at the planet, Rey felt a hum start in her chest, building and building until it dispersed throughout her entire body. The Force was reaching out and communicating with her on a cellular level. Somehow she knew where she was meant to be, and as she took the controls over from Chewie, she spoke softly to alleviate his concerns. 

"The Force is guiding me, Chewie. It will show us where we need to be." 

His response drew her attention back to the fact that she was without a weapon aside from her blaster, but that wouldn't do her much good in a fight against someone with a lightsaber of their own. Still untrained in the Force, it would take little effort to do away with either of them.

"If I am truly meant to die today, in this place, not even a lightsaber could stop that." He knew it to be true, but Chewie wasn't ready to see another of his family die. Rey was slightly overcome with emotion at the sentiment and, determined as she was, a few tears managed to run free. No one had ever cared enough that the thought of losing her concerned them. 

_Family,_ she told herself. _I do have one._

A voice inside her whispered that the Endless Swamp needed her attention, that she would find exactly what she needed there, but how could it know if she herself wasn't sure?

Faith was something she had in spades; faith kept her on Jakku year after year while she waited for her family to return, faith allowed her to travel with Finn, Han and Chewie, and faith escorted her to _The Supremacy_ to find Kylo with the hope that she'd leave with Ben. She followed the directions mentally gifted to her and landed the ship just beyond a deep, dark swamp that made her wonder if she would come across what Skywalker found in the swamps of Dagobah. 

——— 

Kylo avoided sleep for so long that he couldn't really say when he last closed his eyes or allowed his mind to still, always concerned about letting some of her leak through into his subconscious. Time moved on like all matters.

High Command of the First Order sat around a large conference table while Hux blathered on and on about new training regimens and improved abilities among the new group when compared with the control section. 

"Will we be taste testing both?" All parties turned and looked at their Supreme Leader as if he'd grown four heads since the meeting had started. 

"I'm sorry, sir. I don't think I understand." Hux paused at the far end of the room, just far enough that he might be able to take a running start should Kylo give any indication that he intended to Force choke the man. 

Kylo stood and used the force more than his own strength and dexterity to amble about the room. "You claimed these Stormtroopers are new and improved, but how will we quantify that?"

The general paled, turning nearly white under his slicked back ginger hair, and looked around as if the answer to the question was tucked away in a corner of the room. "Er—" 

Let it not be said that Kylo lacked a sense of humour. 

Eastale Kenntook, newly appointed Grand Moff of Saccoria, cleared his throat and shared a look with many of the officials sitting uncomfortably around the table. "Perhaps we can discuss current issues that have cropped up?" He posed it as a question, his voice trailing off toward the end of his statement. 

"Absolutely, Kenntook, share your concerns." He remained standing, ready to move should someone touch one of his frayed nerves and ignite his fury. 

"Our talks with the Ssri-ruuk have all but fallen apart at this point. Their terms are unrealistic and non-negotiable so we are at a stand still." 

The meeting descended into talk of inter-galactic politics, and Kylo's ability to follow along switched off around the point of the conversation where they discussed which Wild Space planet would provide the nicest assortment of sweets should they decide to colonise. 

At some point during the meeting, he meandered back to his seat, took stock of the remaining agenda items, and rested his head down on his open palm. That was the position he awoke in some indeterminate amount of hours later when the beeps of a cleaning droid startled him as it cleared away items left behind.

Though he could recall nothing once his eyes closed, Kylo felt infinitely better for even the small amount of rest. The only promise for a dreamless sleep was by way of exhaustion, and he struggled to get himself through the kilometres of corridors that wound around the ship in the nearly hallucinogenic haze. 

He fell into his bed fully clothed, with boots and cape still tightly latched on, and the world inverted into a dreamscape of fresh green grass and wild ladalum blooms. 

Gone were his dark tunics and leather breeches, replaced instead with the type of clothing his father wore, and somehow this didn't puzzle him at all. 

"It suits you," a voice called out from a nearby chinar tree. 

"Who's there?" He attempted to rise and investigate this voice when a figure dropped down from one of the high branches, and his breath was sucked in so quickly that he coughed for a whole minute.

Her hair was wild and free, and she wore an almost fully translucent gown that was clearly not made for tree climbing or anything other than sitting upon a throne while he fed her anything she desired. It didn't matter what it was, he'd get it for her even if he died trying. 

"Rey." 

Everything in him wanted to go to her and wrap her up in his arms until he covered her entire body and then, then he'd proceed to kiss her beautiful ruby lips and run his tongue over the pulsing vein in her neck. 

"You don't seem happy to see me." Worry lines appeared on her forehead, and it physically hurt him to know they were there because of him. His hand moved of its own volition, rising up to swipe away a blade of grass that landed on her cheek.

"I can't describe how I feel now that I'm in front of you," he said with no effort, the words were flowing from his lips like water gushing out of a fissure in a dam. 

And she smiled again. 

"Do you know that I've been looking for you, Ben?" He tried to nod, but found that the last word, that name, pierced him completely, and he looked down to see deep, dark red colour traveling across his tan shirt from gashes in his abdomen. 

"I—I— _Rey_." She was close enough that he could lean down in the millimetres open between them, and he descended, nearly touching, a few breaths apart, and he wanted to cry out in joy as their lips touched.

His heart thudded so deeply in his chest that it awoke him, suddenly realising that he was sweating under all those layers, and a deep burn hit at the edges of his eyes when he thought back to how truly happy she was to see him. His own traitorous body wanted to rush back to that moment and bask in her brightness for a minute longer.

"You can't allow yourself to give in to this," he said to the air and the stars and absolutely anything that would listen.

"You're Kylo Ren, the Supreme Leader of the First Order, and she will never want you as you are." Those weren't his words, but it didn't matter who spoke them, he knew they were true.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's some violence in the middle section of this chapter. It's fairly typical for the Star Wars universe, but feel free to skip to the third part of the chapter and I'll discuss in the end notes.

Each step she took onto the sodden soil nearly had her stumbling down onto her face if it weren't for Chewbacca's strong grip. The temperate weather was the first thing she noticed; her skin almost tingled with the level of humidity they had to trudge through. She didn't know how he was going to survive this, but he rarely complained. 

There was no sound, no movement beside their own, but the stillness of it all battling with her heavy heart kept her alert. 

At the edge of the bank, they both stopped and waited, nearly all the light from the planet's three moons was obscured by the thick copse that circled the entire swamp. 

"Do you think—" Rey started to ask before the sound of wings rustling drew her attention away. This would have been the perfect moment to ignite a lightsaber if she had one of her own. Chewie held his trusty bowcaster up, ready to strike, should the creature decide to attack. 

But it never came and neither did anything else. 

They stood there, primed and ready, for what felt like hours before she let out a deep breath and allowed her shoulders to droop, her muscles to relax, and turned her back to the swamp. 

"This may be as good a time as any to practice our meditations." She couldn't stop the laugh that bubbled up at his response. "Okay, so _I_ will practice meditating and you will... nap?"

Much as she had done days prior, she sat at the top of the ramp, legs folded in front of her with one arm rested on each leg, and she closed her eyes while opening her mind. 

It never worked before, but there was nothing else to do, so what was the harm in trying?

Unlike last time, she saw before her a tendril of... something. It hung down directly in her line of sight like a long strand of her fringe except that it glowed a deep colour in a range between green and blue, all colours that inexplicably drew her eye. If she believed in things like coincidence, she might not have seen the deliberate intention in it without the hum of the Force through her body. 

_Grasp it_, the hum said. _This was exactly what you need_. 

And who was she to argue? The Force knew much more than she could.

So, she listened and yanked on the tendril, doing what she was told, and everything distorted into a blur of bright, white light. It was too much to keep her eyes open, and when they shut fully, she felt infinitely lighter than before. 

As Rey opened them again, with concerted effort, the world wasn't as she last saw it. Instead of being in a body, her entire energy floated freely in the eaves of whatever ship the Force thought to inject her into. 

Maybe she wasn't aware of precisely where she was, but the Force tied her to a woman, of average height and blonde, as she walked through the corridors with a swagger in each step. 

———

The Knights of Ren had routinely scheduled skirmishes every day, but no one expected Kylo to turn up again ever again after he ascended. Most of the leadership for the Knights was taken over by Tyrkarl Ren, and he was happily putting their noses to the grindstone, both proverbially and literally, the sadistic bastard. 

There was always a rivalry between Kylo and Tyrkarl, more than any of the other Knights, because Tyrkarl—back, long ago, when he was still known as Harold—was one of Luke's favourite students. He was determined to raise himself up above the other padawan, the one with Skywalker blood in his veins. 

Every lesson saw Tyrkarl struggling to come out on top while Kylo tried to do the best he could, his mind was always on other things: the comments the older padawans made behind his back, things he heard from the jedi masters, the enjoyment he got from his calligraphy, the problems with his parents, and the whispering inside his own head. There were always more problems than he had time for, and he wouldn't engage with the other man. That only seemed to infuriate him more. 

"Kylo."

He stopped barely over the threshold of the large gymnasium. "That's Supreme Leader or Sir to you, Tyrkarl. Be happy I don't cut out your tongue for your insolence." 

If they were wearing their masks, he wouldn't have witnessed the twitch in the other man's face before he schooled his features back from the look of utter disgust that momentarily passed over it. 

The air was tense as Kylo walked in, disrobing until he was down to only a thin ArachSilk shirt and his leather breeches. The hilt of his crossguard saber was in his hand instantly, the guidance of the Force pushing each of the Knights away until he and Tyrkarl stood in opposing stature. They circled around each other like two wolves waiting to see the weakness in their opponent, step after step as the temperature rose with their blood pressure. 

Maybe he never utilized his own security personnel to protect his Supreme being, but these people who once counted Kylo as among their ranks would rue the day they killed him. He wasn't sure of many things in this life, but he knew Rey would avenge him and slaughter everyone who had a hand in it. Would she turn darksider, like he did, or would she fall deeper and be yet another jedi who couldn't stop their descent until they hit the bottom and finally became a sith?

Not her, not his girl. 

He'd believe the entire galaxy might spontaneous explode before he could even consider that she might follow him down this dark path.

Yet again, his mind started to wander back to her side without his permission, and this part, that moment, would be where he'd hit any fresh injury to feel the pain to take him away from the hope and the longing. But there was none, he was still in one piece, unscathed, for one moment more. 

"I know you've wanted this for a long time. Take up your saber and fight me like you deserve to be master of the Knights." 

With the die cast, the other man visibly fumed. He watched his mind turn over, searching out every move he could make, and Kylo knew, then, that he was already deep inside Tyrkarl's psyche. He didn't treat the Knights as Snoke treated him, but he wasn't a benevolent master either. 

"Ready," Tyrkarl Ren growled, his breath puffing out his always ruddy cheeks. He was only a few years older than Kylo, but he considered how aware he was of his own faults and knew Tyrkarl lacked any sense of his own actuality. 

He stood tall, feeling no urgent need to move as he swung his ignited saber in a figure eight movement to stretch out his wrist, and he waited as the other man fidgeted left then right until he made a few false starts while he seemed to overthink his initial strike. 

There wasn't a need to attempt to probe at his mind; each thought clearly wrote itself across his face without his active acknowledgement. 

It was the waiting that got to him, so he took one small step forward and it seemed as if whatever spell kept Tyrkarl from moving was broken in a flash and then he was barreling down on Kylo, throwing his weight around like a man possessed. Tyrkarl always lacked finesse, like a certain box wasn't checked when the order for him was placed, and it took barely a minute for Kylo to spin and dodge his way around. 

There _really_ wasn't an intent to hurt—Kylo's veins yearned to make something crumble under his boot and it was the luck of the draw, his frustration and all the tension in his body screamed for a way out. 

Kylo's footwork and nimble movements immediately outshone the other man's as he swung and swiped around, maybe simply hoping that one slash of his saber would bring him dividends. 

"Do you yield?" 

A scream was the only response he received and Tyrkarl lunged again, this time his whole body went at the Supreme Leader, the pulsing red lightsaber in his hand almost forgotten as it hung down, cutting a deep gash into the floor. 

With a step to the right Kylo avoided a forceful collision of their bodies, but failed to notice the other man's lightsaber jump into his other hand and at that point, the writing was already on the wall. He couldn't move away, his body too heavy to twist forcefully this way or that, but he managed to manipulate the Force enough that the other beam of screaming red plasma pressed into his side, burning away the flimsy cover of his shirt and into the flesh of the left side of his body. 

"Maker!" The scream didn't come from him, but from one of the onlookers and he flew at Tyrkarl, the Force flowing through him, and _yes_ this was what he needed, what he craved. Kylo was barely able to stop himself from taking a full swing at his neck, but there had to be some consequence, some kind of punishment doled out for the sake of the lesson learned. 

Instead, he fell down to his knees and twirled his saber in an oval crest that cut Tyrkarl's right hand away from the rest of his body. 

He screamed, his oversized body dropping completely to the floor, and the rest of the Knights stood stock still, wondering if they should step in and incur Kylo's wrath or wait for him to finish what he started. 

Kylo walked around him, taking in the anguish and pain written on the other's face, "You always wanted to match Skywalker. Now you finally have this in common. Consider it a present, gifted from me to you."

The lightsaber switched off, and he walked away, grabbing his things to return back to his chambers before the adrenaline gave way and the full brunt of pain hit him all at once. It did out in the hall, nearly taking him down to the floor in the corridors outside the training arena. Merche was there in a flash, heaping most of his weight onto her shoulder as she carried him back, but he took the first steps toward his door to keep his protective measures from killing the both of them. 

"That was stupid, Kylo! So stupid," Merche scolded. In the privacy of his sitting room, he allowed her to speak to him in such a way, but he held up his hand in response. 

"Don't forget who you're speaking to, Merche. I am no longer Ben Solo and it's best you remember that." 

She pursed her lips and looked down at the injury on his midsection, still somewhat obscured by the shirt he wore, "Take this off. I'll grab the bacta." 

For a rough fighter like Kylo, there was always a need, a requirement, to have a medkit on hand as closely as possible because he ended up needing it more often than not. 

When she returned, he was reclined back on a long chaise, sweat slicked with blackened skin and red blood spilt from his side, but he was calm. The look on his face resembled something close to serenity. It took her completely by surprise. 

"I don't need the bacta, just—ah—just something to clean it." 

_Bloody stupid Solos_, she thought to herself as she set to running a flash-sterliser over the wound which appeared to be much deeper than she initially anticipated. "I think you should go to the medbay, sir. This doesn't look good at all." 

His breathing was rather laboured, and she'd witnessed him in pain before, on many occasions, sometimes with terrible injuries that seemed close to ending him, but this was different in a way she couldn't put her finger on. 

Seeing him like this reminded her that he was human just like she was, though she considered him to be on some level above the rest of the human race. A part of her long since boxed up and stored away had dreamed of a moment with him, like this, where he appeared to be truly human and vulnerable and perhaps, maybe, need her like she needed him. 

"Kylo..." 

His eyes were shut tight, and he didn't respond, making her believe he fell asleep until her fingers touched the wound, still tender and inflamed, and his hand grasped her arm at the wrist. 

"Enough," he uttered softly. Their eyes connected across the chasm between them and something inside her said _yes, this is it_, whose voice it was she couldn't say, and she didn't wait for even one beat of her heart before she bounced up on her toes to press her lips down against his. 

Time froze for her, and maybe for him too, but their lips had barely brushed together when he was pushing her away his own strength and the help of the Force. The combination of the two slammed her against the far durasteel and permscrete wall, knocking the breath from her lungs and littering her eyesight with millions of tiny little pinpricks of dazzling stars. 

It was possible her brain was so concussed from the impact that she began to hallucinate. What other explanation had Kylo speaking to the empty air around him? Words ran across her mind until she fell fully into unconsciousness. 

———

Rey had no idea how she did it, at some point she stopped being non-corporeal and turned back into herself, the Force instead connecting her with Kylo as it always loved to do. 

She witnessed the other woman kiss him, the tears in her eyes didn't obscure her vision as much as she might've liked, and though he tried to stop it, it was too late. 

His eyes flew to her as her choked gasp gave her away. Maybe he didn't realize she had been there all along, but it still hurt, like a dagger plunged into her chest and twisted. 

Seeing him half-dressed wasn't a new experience for her, she didn't know about the blonde's history with it, but the new injuries on his body gave her pause. 

She only managed to catch glimpses of their quick movements during the sparring session. In one moment they stood separately and the oversized, top heavy man was without a hand in the next, Kylo grasping his own side as he walked away. 

"Is this what meditation gives me? Seeing you with another woman, I'd rather do without." In a huff she turned her back on him, seeing nothing other than the grey wall of the inside corridor of _The Falcon_. She couldn't say when she got up or moved about, but it was a miracle she hadn't dropped herself right off the edge of the bank and into the swamp. 

"Rey, look at me." His voice was pleading in a way that she was all too familiar with. It tugged sharply on her heartstrings. 

Why was it that he always brought her to tears?

"I don't know" was his answer, and how could she be surprised that he picked up on each thought as it moved through her brain? 

The tears were flowing freely then, no part of her was ready for the flood gates to open and yet they did, unbidden and out of control. She could feel his pain at the sight of her, and she struggled to parse out whether it was being face to face with her or the sorrow in her eyes. 

"This isn't supposed to hurt so much." He said it from directly behind her, but still her body kept her bolted down in that very spot, immovable. 

Each word tasted like copper on the tip of her tongue. Why couldn't it ever be easy? "You avoid me for months and suddenly, you're conflicted. Which is it? I've called out to you for so long and there's nothing, no response, pure silence. Tell me why." 

The conflict was clearly written all over his face when she turned to take him in. At some point he'd gotten to his feet and stood close enough to touch, and his hands shook like he desperately wanted to reach for her. "It's not that easy," his voice was so deep, she'd nearly forgotten how hearing it made her shiver. 

"It's easy if you want it to be." 

The words were so simple they speared him right through. Of course she didn't understand the temptation, the pain, the abject horror at the thought of losing himself in her, but also the joy too. 

Before he could find the proper words for a response, she was standing so close to him. "Is it easy with her?" Her throat constricted around each word, scratchy and sore, but she wouldn't shed more tears today. She could promise herself that. 

His eyes moved over a part of the room she could no longer see, but she knew what was there. "There is nothing between us, Merche and I." 

"That isn't what I saw." 

"What you saw was a foolhardy mistake," he ran his hand down the edge of her arm, the first contact they'd had in months. It was too good to be true. "If anything, I belong to you." 

The laughter was unstoppable as it fell from her lips. "Is that what this is... belonging? You shut me out again and again until I can't bring myself to imagine you care about me at all." Her fingers slotted through his and both their eyes cast down to where they were connected. "I know you understand how much it hurts."

She felt him shrug his massive shoulders. How was it possible that he felt so strongly yet wasn't aware of the consequences for his own actions?

"You don't belong to me," she responded. 

The hurt was there instantly, his body tensing and his jaw working like it did in the throne room. "Why would you say that?" 

"Why would I believe anything different?" Her eyes were downcast, watching her own feet more than their still entwined fingers, and she was teetering over the edge of excitement and dread. 

"Rey—What? You can't mean that," he almost sobbed out each word. 

It was then that she dropped his hand and stepped back. "It's all I know."

"How can you—you know how I feel. You have to."

Her head shook fervently in response. "I don't." 

With the heavy weight of her words, he stumbled back to the chaise, roughly dropping his weight onto the overburdened cushions that groaned with their work. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing the bond to close so she could step away and sort out her feelings alone, but it persisted. 

"Why won't it stop?" She was looking at him again, tear trails lining her cheeks, while his face was buried in his hands. "It won't let me close it." 

When he finally looked up again, Rey was shocked by the state of his face: cheeks cherry red, eyes hard and dark like the colour of an agitated bladder-bug, his mouth sorted into the usual tight line while his jaw worked. 

In four steps she was in front of him, standing for only a second before she dropped down to kneel at his feet, the nervous gleam in his eyes making her brave. "Why won't you let me close it, Kylo?" 

"Don't. You don't call me that." His voice was somehow lower, deeper than before, and it started an inferno deep in her gut.

"You don't like it when I call you Ben." 

He looked down at his feet and her body stuffed between his spread legs. "Don't call me anything then." 

"Close the bond, please. Let me go. You've got other things to trouble yourself with," she indicated toward one of the far walls where Merche surely was even if she couldn't see her at that moment. 

His hand reached out and touched her hair, running his fingers over the three buns she had it assembled into once again, and she found herself sighing defeatedly. "I don't know what you want," she whispered more to his knee than anything else. 

"You've always known. Don't act surprised." 

"But—" 

"Do I need to be exceedingly clear?" 

She could only nod, her entire body struck dumb at the possibility of finally knowing the truth, of hearing it from him directly. It didn't matter that it was through the bond, she could touch him, taste him, feel him. It was enough. 

"I know you feel it, Rey. Through the bond, through intuition, you know how much you mean to me. How important you are." 

"You've never—" 

"I have." In a slow series of movements, he reached out and grasped her face in his enormous hands. "You know in here. You know that I want you, _need_ you, require you to breathe." 

Whether he let it happened or forced it to, the bond fizzled out at that moment, and when she returned back to Zakuul fully, it was sitting on her knees with her hands hovering over Ben's, or where his were a moment ago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kylo engages in a fight with a man who strives to boost himself above the Supreme Leader. His anger gets the better of him and he ends the battle by using his lightsaber to cut off the man's hand in a true Skywalker move, but he gets a saber in the side himself.


	4. Chapter 4

Asleep. Awake. Drifting somewhere in between, the night wasn't very restful for her at all.

At the edge of her consciousness, he persisted, more of a warm afterglow than anything substantial. 

Chewie seemed to pick up on this and gave her as much space as possible while she got her bearings back. 

It took an entire day for her to feel at ease again. That was what this mission required: no more distractions, no thoughts given over to anything other than the necessities. 

Instead of calling out to him, she dialed into the Force, "Lead me. Show me." Where she required meditation to feel fully centered with the Force, now she tapped into a previously unknown store that buzzed to life inside her as if she turned the spigot and the water flowed. 

"I have to go alone," she breezed past him with nary a weapon in her grasp. If he offered a response, she tuned it out and continued on a path lightened for only her eyes. 

The light from the highest moon glimmered over the murky water of the swamp where she paused for barely a minute, and as if tied to the end of a long cord, she was pulled toward the dark woods. She was vaguely aware of the fact that she may encounter any number of wild animals on her travels, but she was undeterred. 

The cord tugged again, as if intending to urge her on faster, but her own feet could only move so fast over uneven terrain and through the thick vegetation. Her movements turned clumsy as she tried to negotiate around low hanging branches and protruding roots, all obscured her vision enough that her pace slowed down to a crawl while she was guided by that invisible magnet. It never went away, the feeling just behind her navel, that urged her on again and again. 

Nothing scuttled across her path, but she heard the sounds of movement all around her: leaves crunching underfoot, branches bending and snapping, wings fluttering up above her. Everything was animated in the dark. The few days they spent in the area since landing proved that to be true. Only insects of the flying variety met them while the sun was still up. 

She approached a fork in the path. Up ahead was a thicket much too full to trudge through, but uncertainty consumed her as she looked off to the left then the right. The canopy up above was open for the first time, and she allowed herself a minute or two to get lost in the stars that shined down on them all. 

_Do you see the same stars that I do? Are you on one of these? Can you feel the weight of my eyes? Are you looking up at me tonight?_

There was a squeeze on her heart, as if it was held in the hand of someone who was determined to see it continue to beat on. 

She shook the nonsense out of her mind and closed her eyes, letting the wind tell her which path she needed to follow. There was a whisper in each ear, attempting to lure her this way and that with a devil on each shoulder, until she blocked everything out to feel the Force wash over her again. It took only a few beats of her hearts for the pull to yank her abruptly to the left, and she tried to stay plugged into the full power as long as she could. 

Deeper and deeper Rey walked, the forest grew louder around her with each step, and yet she felt safe, cocooned as she was in a bubble of protection that was only partially her own creation. Her own power still wasn't this strong though she felt stronger and better the further she got from the swamp and the ship. 

A sound behind her made her pause momentarily. The movement stopped at the same moment her own did. Left foot, right foot. Stop. Left foot, right foot. Stop. Nothing was visible when she turned to look around. Either her mind was playing tricks on her or something out there was tracking her. 

Pushing out a ripple of the Force, it came back with nothing detected. She considered reaching out farther than this singular planet, knowing he might happily greet her nudge, and that was enough. 

It was a thorn of hope in the foot of desperation, nearly enough. 

As her steps picked up pace, she noticed changes in the trees around her where the moonlight provided enough of its illumination to see clearly. Whole branches, high and thick, were broken off of the main trunk, and she stopped to observe each tree in the circle around her. Rey knew how to spot the evidence of large predators. She survived many things on Jakku; a scavenger always figured out the best way to solve a problem and get the most out of any environment. 

Her hand flew to her waistband, but no weapon was there. In her foolish head, she'd left _The Millennium Falcon_ with nothing besides her wits. Those wouldn't protect her from a simple aphid. 

The adrenaline started to course through her body faster and faster, but she held herself back from breaking out into a full on sprint. 

What was she running for? How would she know if she found it?

Whatever was trailing behind her picked up speed at the same moment she did. Was it instinct or had it somehow tuned into her subliminally? 

Everything whizzed by her as she ran at full speed toward something off in the distance. At first she thought maybe she was seeing things, hallucinating perhaps, but no. There was something there, beyond the tree line, lit up in the light from one of the moons high overhead. It was so close she could almost touch it, and she did reach out, only to feel something sharp at her shoulder and the back of her neck. 

She stopped, swayed for a moment, and turned her head to see razor sharp teeth stuck down into her skin. Fear lanced through her at the sight of such an animal, terrifying as it was, and then everything went miraculously black. 

———

She heard voices. Clear and close enough that she knew it wasn't a figment of her imagination or some sort of Force dream—she'd rather not have another one of those. 

They spoke softly as if concerned with waking her, but she had no idea where she was and who these people were. 

Every fibre of her being was screaming out in pain though no sound erupted out of her mouth. Was she struck dumb by whatever bit her back there? Now that she thought about it, she wasn't sure if she could actually make out any distinct words. There was noise, yes, and differences in tone and timbre that alluded to multiple voices, but what were they actually saying? 

She faded back into the black as everything but the pain drifted away. 

———

"Do you think it worked?" 

"Shh! You'll wake her if she's not already dead yet." 

"I thought you checked." 

"I did, but it takes a few days to draw all the poison out. She's lucky we felt her coming. Damn voxyns. I thought they'd all died away." 

Whoever was having the conversation around her, Rey called it a blessing that the distant murmur of voices had transformed into specific words that she could clearly understand. She wasn't dead. 

Everything still hurt, but it was more of a dull ache than the heart-wrenching, excruciating pain that she struggled through before. 

There were two, maybe three, people standing around her, though she didn't feel their stares like she expected. Her eyes still refused to open, and she was fine with that. A little more rest would never be a bad thing. She was getting what she lacked the night before. Was that last night? The people she heard spoke as if she'd been here for awhile, but surely that wasn't true, right?

"Be quiet!" A female hissed, not too far away from her head. 

"Dartimo, you are just as loud as anyone else. If anything!" A man yelled at the woman who spoke before. Their voices echoed and bounced around the room. Maybe she was stolen away by a rich family, laying in an enormous bed, surrounded by an older man and woman who wanted to be her parents. If this was a dream, she'd wake up to their adoring faces. 

Things like that only happened in dreams, and if she was dreaming, she'd ask for Ben to rouse her with a sweet kiss to her lips like they do in stories they tell when sharing an endless bottle of Corellian nectar. She'd laid there, eyes sealed shut, and waited for the heavy footsteps of a large man fully unaware of how obvious his gait was. But it never came. 

"Excuse me, miss?" It took too much effort to pry her eyes open once she realized someone was actually speaking directly to her. A young man, maybe no older than fifteen, sat next to where she was spread out on a pile of large climbing ferns that created a rather soft mattress on a hard stone floor. 

Her eyes took him in before glancing around the room and landing on the man and woman speaking loudly by the door. "Where am I?" She asked through a mouth as dry as her home planet. The boy looked up, and it was enough to draw attention to them. They brought cup after cup of water to her and for that alone, she couldn't thank them enough. 

"How long have I been here?"

"Do you know where you are?" A question answered with a question, she knew this routine. 

Still, her mind raced back through what she could recall of the recent memories. "I was on Zakuul, last I remembered. Where are we?" 

The two adults sat down beside her, next to the boy, and she would've tried moving to sit as well, but her body was too stiff, and the few joints she could moved screamed out in silent agony. 

"Still on Zakuul," the man explained. 

"But _where_?"

The woman leaned forward, obscuring Rey's view of anything except the woman's unnaturally pale face. "What's your name? I am Dartimo, this is my husband Londcolt, and our son Benaust." Each nodded when their name was announced. 

"I'm Rey." 

"Welcome." 

No one moved to speak. It was an unnatural silence, full and thick of the unknown, and Rey had a million questions scrolling through her mind. And then she reached out with the Force and felt all three of them, strong and bright. 

Before she could string together the right words to ask the question, Dartimo nodded and smiled down at Rey. "We are one with the Force. Thankfully it let us know you were coming, and we found you shortly after you were bitten." 

Bite. The injury in her left side twinged as a reminder. She couldn't turn her head enough to look it over. "What—what was that?" 

"Voxyn. Horrible creatures. They prey on the force-sensitive hence our encampment. Many of us haven't ventured outside in years." Londcolt continued to explain where they found her, how they leeched the poison out of her blood, and that it would still be days before she'd be back to her full strength. 

She planned to ask more questions, had so many that needed to be answered, and one was on the tip of her tongue when she felt him brush up against the mental barrier she'd erected when they landed on the planet. It was enough to make her shiver and move for the first time since the attack. 

"Movement and flexibility is a great sign! It has been six days since we found you, so the poison should be almost gone in a few days. Take it slow," the man told her. 

Six days! How could she have been completely incapacitated for six whole days?! Ben's greeting made more sense now, but she worried about Chewie and what he had done during those days without any communication from her. 

The question was on the tip of her tongue when Dartimo cut her off. "There's no way to communicate with anyone in the outside world. I figure we've been considered extinct for decades now, maybe longer. Do they talk about the Knights of Zakuul where you come from?" 

Rey thought over the best way to explain to these people that no one knew of their existence, before or since, and it felt like a cruel message to have to deliver. 

"Where I'm from," she started softly, "we don't know about much outside of the desert. Jakku can be a terrible place at times, but not many people come there if they have other options. I can't say that I heard about this planet or the Knights of Zakuul until recently." 

"Jakku?" They all looked at each other, even the child, and she felt as if they shared some inside joke where she'd missed the punchline. "I thought that whole planet was nothing aside from junk." 

Her face morphed into a sour look. "Could say the same about this place," Rey whispered to herself. 

"What was that?" 

"Oh? Nothing!" She rolled onto her back with one of her blinding smiles and stared up at the ceiling instead. It wasn't so different from the walls or the floor, still stone, but the light didn't reach all the way up to illuminate whatever was up there. There could be anything up there, but all that scared her in that instant was the possibility that she may never leave this place, and it was that exact moment that the walls started slowly closing in on her. 

In the space of mere moments, her breath came quickly, she was flushed, and her heart thumped against her rib cage at such excessive speeds that she worried it might crack the muscle right down the middle. "Is any—isn't anyone worried about those walls?!" 

They all glanced around the large, open room and shared a look of confusion. "The walls? What's wrong with the walls?" 

"Don't you see them moving?! We must warn everyone!" Her body was still incapacitated, unable to move a single millimetre, "Someone help me up, please!"

"Rey, are you alright? The walls are still where they always were. See..." Benaust stood and ran back and forth from one side of the room to another a few times, completely shattering her perspective as the room shrank back to its original size in the blink of an eye. 

"Perhaps the lack of nutrients is impacting your system. Let me see about a meal." Dartimo walked off into the far end of the room and returned with a large bowl and cup, setting it down on the floor beside her supine body. All she could do was look down at it until Londcolt helped her to sit up, asking Benaust to be kind and help her eat. 

She had no idea if it was true, but it felt like the first meal she'd eaten in days. Her body greedily accepted the sour soup. "What is this?" 

"Root-leaf stew," Benaust responded as he spooned more into her waiting mouth. "We grow the roots and weeds ourselves. 'Bout the only thing we can eat." 

More people funneled into the room as she ate, and she was surprised by the sheer number. How did they come to be here? 

The numbers were far too many for her to recall names or anything other than the story they told about the schisms within the Knights as the family of Valkorion shaped the group for their own use, casting out those who fell out of favour. Many of their numbers were descendants of those exiled after the Empress Vaylin reorganised her personal security retinue into the Horizon Guard. 

"We are all direct descendants," said an old man who appeared to struggle with the work required to keep his body upright. 

"Why are you all here? What is this, anyway?" All these people came from somewhere, so she knew this was more than a single room if what they said earlier about never venturing outside was true. 

A beautiful woman, perhaps 40 years old, approached, and Rey was momentarily stunned into silence. The long length of her platinum hair moved in waves as if touched by a breeze centered on her only. There was a second where she couldn't explain what made her heart race at the sight of this stranger, but it was during the cataloguing of her beauty marks that the thick fog of bewilderment shattered around her: someone else had beauty marks that she loved to stare at for endless periods of time. 

Her mind flitted off to somewhere else, maybe where he thought she was, and she was assured, somehow, that he was thinking of her at that exact moment. 

With a smile, she shared a look with this other woman before words were necessary. When she did speak, it was in a soft sing-song voice that was certainly meant to draw one in. "The creature that stalked you through your journey here, the voxyn, were brought to this planet to decimate our entire population. They prefer to hunt the force-sensitive which is why we've lived here for centuries, away from the sun, moon, and stars." 

A life spent inside was worse than how she grew up on Jakku, and she couldn't deny them their angst where that was concerned. 

Suddenly, the entire room faded away into nothing but darkness, and she was met with the feeling of floating away from everything including her body.

"You're not alone," a disembodied, echoing voice said to her. She knew that voice, and she could hear the smile in his voice. 

"Neither are you." If it were possible to smile without a face, she would've right then. She wanted to see one on his own face more than anything. 

If only, if only. 

"How are you doing this?" Speaking into the ether wasn't the weirdest thing she'd ever done, but this wasn't a regular connection via the Force either. "Where are you?" 

"Where I was when I last saw you. Whatever protections you have in place are astonishing." The bewilderment was evident in his voice. "This was the best I could do under the circumstances." 

There was no way to explain it all to him, and she was sworn to secrecy anyway, so she kept her mouth shut and instead pushed any and all warm feelings through to him. She felt cocooned in a warm, fluffy towel for an instant before she was pushed, or yanked, for all intents and purposes, back down into her earthly body. 

Benaust was leaning over her where she'd ended up slouched sideways on the stone floor. "We thought we lost you." He turned her head this way and that while most of the crowd surrounded her, getting closer and closer until she felt pressed in by them instead of the walls this time. 

She could see the questions in their eyes, questions she refused to answer. It was their secret, no one else's, and she fostered it close to her heart. 

"I'm okay, I promise." For the first time, she felt the free movement of her joints and sat up on her own. It was a first tiny step towards freedom. 

They answered the many questions she had, truthfully from what she could gather, but there was one idea that wouldn't quiet down in her mind. "Since you're force-sensitive, do you have lightsabers?" 

A few laughed, some rather rudely, as if they would stoop as low as using lightsabers like the primitive beings in the jedi and sith ranks. "Not just any lightsaber." The crowd parted as another older gentleman strutted up to her carrying a staff somewhat similar to the quarter staff she had back on Jakku. 

But she could feel the difference in the energy that buzzed around it, ever ready for a brilliant display. It was maybe half the size of her old weapon, and she wanted to feel it under her hands. "Can I?" She searched a dozen faces for some sort of positive reaction, but they were all void of emotion, either positive or negative. 

The entire room was still for what felt like an eternity. She was never one for mind tricks, that was for the older generation, so she simply pushed her need and elation out to them, and they held it out for her perusal. 

It nearly shook in her hands or perhaps that was a reaction in her own body. She and the staff were two separate pieces of a very simple puzzle, only one left and right piece each. "This is... wow." Her fingers drifted over a switch near the middle of it, and she used the Force to propel everyone back, knocking some onto their backs while others used their own grasp of the Force to stay upright. 

Pressing down on the switch, one end of the staff ignited in a luminous display of bright white light. It was a saberstaff. 

"A lightsaber pike, actually." 

That didn't matter. It was exactly what she came here to find. 

Her entire face was alight with promise. "Does anyone know how to create lightsabers—or pikes? I will happily take whatever help I can get." 

———

It turned out they had a veritable stockpile of weapons from their ancestors, most still in working condition, and she wondered if the crystals in these sabers languished unhappily. They all called out to her in a different signature, a 'pick me!' scream that reminded her of the group of porgs she found on Ahch-To. Everyone left her in what she'd lamely named 'The Lightsaber Lobby' except for the men and women who appeared to be somewhere around her own age. Even Benaust had walked away. 

"Does anyone use these, for practice or—I don't know—chopping stubborn vegetables?" She knew looks of confusion would follow her question and attempt at a joke, so she didn't bother turning around. Instead, she took a seat on the stone floor in front of a line of staffs set up against the wall, all similar to the one she held before. 

Though they all appeared to be forged in the same fashion, maybe even by the same hands, it was clear that the kyber crystal in each was unique. She still remembered how each lightsaber, Skywalker's and Kylo's, felt differently in her hand. There was a pulse as if it were a living being too. 

"Pick one up," a man behind her suggested. She wanted to, but it had to be the right one, and she figured she'd have some way of knowing. 

With a deep breath, she closed her eyes and simply reached out. It felt like there were so many voices talking in a chorus in her mind while she searched for a specific voice, a melody. She searched through them all with the help of the Force until she settled on one, further down the line, that sang out to her like nothing else she'd ever heard before. Instead of feeling like she was still trapped in an underground prison filled with labyrinth like passages, she felt free with her eyes still closed. 

Rey ignited the saber, and an overwhelming whoosh of joy built up inside her. It seemed familiar with her eyes still shut tight. It boggled her mind that she didn't need to open her eyes to take in the vibrant red hue of the plasma beam. 

Turning, the colour only enhanced the fearful glances on her companion's faces. 

"That... That wasn't red before. We've tried all the pikes here, each has a white beam like the one before it." Her voice dripped with an increasing sense of panic, so thick Rey tasted it on the back of her tongue. 

She knew that, logically speaking, it didn't sound possible, but she had stepped beyond the point of second guessing anything associated with the Force. "This was meant for me. I know it." 

No one argued nor did they try to take the staff away from her as she twirled it around, getting used to the feel of it, the heft and weight as she moved, spun, and jumped. It was compact, but still too large to clip to her belt as most did with the hilt of lightsaber. Asking permission never crossed her mind; the saber picked her and everyone else was there to bear witness to it. 

Check. One part of the mission successfully completed. Now onto the hard part... 

"I need to speak with whoever is in charge." She stood as straight as possible in an attempt to seem older and more esteemed, to look as powerful as she felt.


End file.
